Background
Towards the end of the 19th century, Riga, the capital of Latvia, became one of the most industrialised cities in the Russian Empire. Around 800,000 industrial workers, half of all those in the Baltic provinces, worked there. Despite the policy of Russification which was introduced there, Latvian nationalist sentiments were more directed towards the Baltic-German landowners, who had formed the governing elite in the Baltic territories since the conquest of the Latvian tribes by predominantly German military orders in the 13th century Livonian Order. The Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party (LSDRP) was well organised and its leading elements were increasingly sympathetic to the Bolsheviks by the time of the 1905 Revolution. When punitive expeditions were mounted by the state following this, armed resistance groups - often affiliated to the LSDRP - were set up to conduct guerilla warfare against the Tsarist regime. Many of these seasoned fighters were subsequently recruited into the Latvian Rifles.
At the outbreak of war Indriķis Lediņš, the Latvian chief of police in Vladivostok, had called for the establishment of Latvian Cavalry units.
At the outbreak of the First World War, recruitment to the Russian Imperial Army was conducted in a very heavy handed way, in some cases being met by riots. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Latvians were recruited and they soon constituted 80% of XX Corps alone. In the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 1915) the XX Corps was surrounded in the Augustov forests and nearly destroyed. About 20,000 Latvian soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured.
Read more about this topic: Latvian Riflemen
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